Onboarding: The 1st Step in Winning the War on Quiet Quitting

Leah Pons: Today, we are joined by Mulberry Talent Partners’ founder Lauren Francis and Julie Kearney. For over 20 years, Julie has been successfully helping leaders implement employee engagement programs that align with their mission, purpose, values, and culture.

As a credentialed coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and a certified Gallup CliftonStrengths Leadership Coach, Julie has hundreds of hours coaching leaders through challenging real-world problems. So, without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce Julie Kearney and Lauren Francis.

Lauren Francis: Welcome everyone. We’re so glad you’re here. And Julie, thank you so much for joining us. This is your second time joining us on Mulberry Conversations and we’re grateful to you for sharing this very important topic today. Julie and I met gosh about 10 years ago when she was CHR with ECOVA NG Corporation. We initially met when we were a staffing partner to her at ECOVA and then followed her to her next organization. And now, she is a well-known HR leader here in Portland, Oregon. And Julie is also our leadership coach here at Mulberry Talent Partners. We are getting tremendous value from our relationship with Julie.

Julie, thank you so much for joining us today. And if you wanted to jump right in. 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, Lauren. Thank you so much. This is a favorite topic of mine. And when Lauren asked me if there was any correlation between onboarding and engagement, I was like, “Oh, yes, there is!”

So, let’s talk about it. I am excited about today’s session. 

So who am I? Lauren and Leah did a beautiful job talking about who I am. If you know anything about coaching, you will probably understand or have heard of the International Coaching Federation, ICF for short. That is the gold standard for leadership coaching.

I’m also a CliftonStrengths coach. One of the reasons I love CliftonStrengths is that when I entered the workforce, it was all about trying to fix what was broken, look at our weaknesses, and then fix that. What I love about the Gallup Strengths approach is that it’s about positive psychology, actually looking at what your strengths are and utilizing that to really access your power and your strengths.

I love both of those tools that I’m using, and I am excited to share with you what we’re going to learn today. Of course, it’s about quiet quitting. We’ve heard a lot about that. Then, it’s about how to build your onboarding plan to really enhance your employee engagement and essentially combat what we know.

Now, as quiet quitting, let’s jump in. Here’s some recent data from Gallup. Gallup and CliftonStrengths are the same company. And for those of you who love data like me, I am a data geek. I can’t get enough of it because, in some ways, it only validates what I already know. There was a recent study done by Gallup that said the employee engagement for U.S. Workers was only 32 percent. Only 32% of employees are engaged. And what does that even mean? SHRM, which a lot of us know, have given us some information about what it costs an organization when we have turnover. An employee turnover can cost as much as 50 percent in the first four months of hourly workers.

If you hire hourly workers, that revolving door may happen for you, and then 50 percent in the first 18 months for senior-level or what you might call salaried staff. So this is a really high cost to organizations, and some conservative estimates say that it will cost a company one and a half to two times an employee’s annual salary to identify and then onboard a replacement. 

It’s a little stunning, right? So, if you think about how many people left in a year, and then you multiply that one and a half to two times that number. I did this information when I was at ECOVA, and it was in the millions of dollars. That’s money leaking out of the organization. This isn’t from lost sales or because we didn’t deliver. It was just literally leaking out. 

When we think about disengagement, sometimes we don’t know what that looks like. So, I’ve done some research about this, and disengagement can look different for different people. You might have heard of flight, fight, and freeze.

If someone has a response when they’re in stress, some of us are in flight—that’s me. Some of us are in freeze, and some of us are in fight.

If someone has, and this is not always, and of course, these are just generalizations, but when a person is in a fight response, they can be naysayers. They can be argumentative. They can perhaps be rude. They can be a toxic stew to the organization. That’s usually in the fight. 

But don’t forget that there are some people who are in a freeze or a flight mode, which could be withdrawal. They used to be very communicative in meetings, and now they’re not. And this goes on for a time. They can just not show up for work, or they can be complacent. 

That’s where this whole Quiet Quitting thing came from. It’s basically about employee engagement, but employee engagement is not as fun of a phrase as Quiet Quitting. Essentially, that’s one of the things that I feared the most when working in Human Resources was when people quit but never left the organization because they were taking a spot, but were not engaged and not contributing how we would want them to do. 

So, Lauren, you’ve probably worked with a lot of companies who are experiencing some of this Quiet Quitting, so to speak. What’s your take on that? 

Lauren Francis: There were a couple of questions. One is that, is this new? Is this a new phenomenon? I mean, you were at ECOVA for a number of years.

Julie Kearney: 10 years. Yeah. 

Lauren Francis: And so, did you see this then and farther down the road? Or is this a new phenomenon? And is this kind of COVID-related? If you could put some perspective on it, that’d be great. 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, I appreciate that question, Lauren. In my opinion, this has been around for a while.

Gallup has been studying employee engagement for dozens of years. The Quiet Quitting it’s a cool phrase, right? It really helps you think about what’s happening. Employee engagement is maybe not as front page news, but it’s been going on for a very long time. And when I talked about what that disengagement looks like, you may be thinking back, “Have there been times when I’ve seen team members like that? Or have I ever felt like that prior to COVID?”

There were a couple of positions that I was in where I was withdrawing. I wasn’t talking as much. I always showed up for work, but it was different than when I was engaged. And so part of what we need to think about is employee engagement and how to improve the employee engagement that we have.

Based upon what we know, there was a study of course done by Gallup, and these five things came back as the number one things that will engage employees.

1. Clarity of expectations. 
2. Connection to your mission and purpose of the company. 
3. Opportunities to learn and grow. 
4. Opportunities for employees to do what they do best. 
5. Feeling cared about at work. 

Now, what I’m going to be talking about with onboarding is how you are actually going to be able to address these in your onboarding program.

However, this is also something that you need to be thinking about for all employees. There’s new data that came out about millennials saying that opportunities to learn and grow is a key part of what’s important to them. You think about where millennials are in their life cycle. 30 to 35 years old, they’re trying to buy a house and starting a family, and so money is important, but they also care a lot about what their own development looks like. So does that resonate, Lauren? 

Lauren Francis: Completely. And it’s an ongoing process. I think the onboarding piece is huge. I’m glad we’re talking about this. It makes a huge difference. It’s an ongoing relationship and transparency in the organization. I feel you need to bring that into the conversation more and include employees in more of what’s going on in the organization and not have so many siloed conversations and so on. This is just a very important topic. 

Julie Kearney: Thank you. So one of the things that I train on is leadership. I don’t know about you, Lauren, but I was first put into a leadership position because I was a high achiever and a high performer. All of a sudden, I was managing all of these people. I had no idea what to do. And so part of my passion is sharing leadership. Of course, from my own experiences and also the research and learning about the best leadership practices.

So that’s some of the leadership consulting that I do, which is helping leaders understand how to address some of these employee engagement issues. 

Lauren Francis: And modern leadership is modern is critical. That’s a loaded statement, but it’s really true that what you’re sharing is critical for leaders to embrace and provide.

Julie Kearney: Yeah, that’s right. And I appreciate that point. When I first started working, I thought about my performance review. I thought about how I had to make sure my boss was happy, and I was focused on all my weaknesses. I mentioned earlier that’s why I was so intrigued by CliftonStrengths because trying to fix weaknesses is actually not productive, but if you understand your strengths and use your different strengths, it can be very empowering. It’s actually just so much more fun to do work that you love to do. 

Okay, so let’s get to onboarding. Recent study data again only 12 percent of employees will strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. 12%! We talked about turnover before and the consequences of this significant turnover within the first year of employment. Onboarding is a key part of avoiding that.

The question is, well, what’s happening? What’s going wrong with our onboarding programs, and how can we fix it? As a head of HR, I obviously didn’t have all of the answers. I’ve done lots of research since then, but here are some key things that I learned and researched in these five areas. So, we’re going to focus on each one. 

Lauren Francis: One thing really quickly, Julie. Onboarding is very important, but pre-boarding is also important. This means that if you made an offer to someone three weeks ago, there is a pre-boarding engagement that is very important for that hire. 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, I love that, Lauren, because you’re right. Onboarding, I think, actually starts at the recruitment cycle, right? That whole experience from the first point that someone is being contacted by your company. We’re going to talk about that. About embodying your company culture. And yes, it bleeds over into recruiting. There is this specific thing that usually companies have an onboarding program. What does that look like? But I appreciate that question so much because there is such a tight link between the pre-boarding, which begins in recruitment, to today, which is our onboarding. 

One of the things that I learned is when onboarding was just seen as an HR thing, it didn’t really work very well. Data has proven that. Gallup has found that when managers take an active role in onboarding, employees are 3 to 4 times more likely to agree that the onboarding experience was exceptional. Three to four times, I strongly agree. So why?

Because if it’s just an HR thing, recruiting is usually handled by HR, so we might have the pre-boarding process done pretty well. It’s easy to say that if an employee comes, our job is done. Well, then there’s this employee just hanging out there, not feeling great at all. 

I’ll tell a little story about me. There was an employee that I hired and our onboarding program needed a little help. She didn’t have a computer for the first two days of her time on my team. She never forgot that she didn’t have a computer. And so it wasn’t about the computer. It was about,  “Am I here? Do you care? Do you care about me?” Onboarding can be a very personal thing. So, HR and managers need to work together to help it feel seamless. 

Lauren Francis: Similar to when hotels prepare for their guests. A lot of preparation goes into that, and it’s the same thing, you know. With employees, it’s very similar. You prepare for that employee, whether it’s the computer or all the other things that we’re talking about. 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, and it’s about the experience and what someone feels like for the experience.

The second thing is, it’s not just a one time event. There is some data that shows this. They surveyed bank tellers, so these are hourly employees. It takes them 12 to 15 months to actually ramp up into their role. And for personal bankers, 15 to 18 months. My goodness. So if you’re thinking that your onboarding program is saying your manager has done the work and we’ve taken them to lunch and we’re done. That is probably not going to be as robust as you’d want it to be. 

Think about the level of skill that’s required, how much time it takes for someone to really understand your company and your culture, and build your program in that way. Some companies do a 30 day, 90 day, and a one year assessment. That’s usually run by HR. It’s an opportunity for you to gain data, and we’re going to talk about getting data for how your program is working. Other companies have that as a meeting with the manager 30 days, 90 days, and a year in. I talked about some of the leadership training that I do. There’s this whole cycle of learning and work that I train managers on so that they are thinking about their employees and have tools to help them manage their employees in a way that is engaging them throughout their entire life cycle as an employee.

Lauren Francis: Well, it sounds like making it the company culture. If you think about it, how many times have we seen a job description incorporating this piece? Because it’s an ongoing process. Is this critically important to organizations, and how does it show up at all levels of the organization? 

Julie Kearney: Yeah. And you hit on that third point, Laure. I believe every company culture is a little bit different, and your program shouldn’t be cookie-cutter. One of the things I love about working with Lauren is that Mulberry has a brand. They have a culture, and it’s very clear who they are and what they want. And it does start from the point of recruitment all the way through. Their employees are experiencing that company culture. Don’t you think, Lauren? I mean, you’ve thought about that, and you’ve integrated that into your own company. 

Lauren Francis: Agreed. Last week we had a stumble, right? We had one of those weeks, and we discovered some things that we weren’t doing very well or doing at all. And it was such an eye-opener. The point is how do you learn from that? What do you do about it? And one is you act quickly. And you’re transparent, and you bring everyone into the conversation. We’re not a large team, but we really stumbled last week. And now we’ve implemented some new ways, actually to come back to our culture and to our mission.

We tied it up within 24 hours. We started having these conversations right away so that everybody could learn from them. And we’re still having ongoing conversations, but it’s created a whole new structure for our organization. We were able to pivot quickly. Regardless of your size, it’s important to look at what’s happening and act.

Julie Kearney: Yeah. A hundred percent agree. And your onboarding program should reflect your company culture, whatever that looks like. I’m not talking about the words on a page that you put on the wall. We’ve all been part of, maybe not everybody, but I was a part of a company where the company’s values were on the wall but were not exhibited in the company culture.

Part of what makes an onboarding program work is when it truly does embody what it feels like to be a part of the company. Gallup has the saying ”What is culture? It’s how we do things around here.” is how they say it. And why I like that is because it’s not some big long explanation, it’s external things that you see, but it’s also the nonverbals, the norms, the things that happen in a culture that everyone knows about but are probably not talked about. So think about that when you are thinking about how to put together your onboarding program and weave it in as if you’re creating this amazing tapestry. How does that show up for you and your company culture?

One of the things that I promised to do is link back this onboarding program to the employee engagement. Not just an HR thing. One of the things that I train on is setting clear expectations. How to do that? There’s actually a formula that I trained to for how to create clear expectations. The number one thing for employee engagement is “Do I understand what success looks like? Do I have clear expectations?” When it’s not an HR thing and you and the manager are working together, you’re setting clear expectations. When it’s more than a one-time event, you’re connecting that to the mission and purpose as well as the culture, right? Mission and purpose are really important to people’s engagement.

Let’s then discuss a compelling vision for the future. One of the things I talked about earlier is how important growth and development are for all employees, but specifically for Gen Z and millennials. Part of what you’re trying to help people understand is how to grow and progress in this company. What does that look like? And I’m not talking about everybody needing to have a promotion every year. I’m not talking about that. 

What I’m talking about is what kind of development conversations your managers have with your employees. How often are they being discussed? How much time are managers and employees interacting? Not just about the work but also about goals, their passions, what they’re really good at, and what they’d like to do. Help build some part of that compelling vision of their future into your onboarding program. 

Lauren Francis: I also think, too, that leaders are mentors, and that mindset is so important. And that’s what people want is that mentorship relationship. The word boss, I’ve thought this for a while; it does not resonate with me at all. It’s just not a word that I think we should be using to refer to the person we work with and for, and the blend between boss and employee shifting to more of a relationship. I think that’s really what people want is they want a real connection and a mentorship. 

Now, I will say that’s just one of the most important things I see in the changes that take place in inspirational and dedicated leaders. That’s a modern leader: a leader who mentors. That is part of what they embody in themselves and within the organization. 

For example, Mulberry is a small company, but we want to create opportunities for people within our organization so that they can thrive. In every situation, it might be thinking about an employee at work with you now and also helping them think about their career, and that’s where the mentorship piece comes in. I just find that that way of thinking is what everyone wants.

Julie Kearney: You’re absolutely right, Lauren. There’s recent data to show that your theory is absolutely fact, that we don’t want a boss anymore. We actually want someone who cares about our development and is interested in supporting that and talking to us about it.

I remember I used to talk to my boss maybe once a year, right? Except for, “Oh, do this or do that.” That is changing. To use Lauren’s perfect analogy, that is the modern leader. It is different, and it can feel a little overwhelming. I have to admit, it feels a little overwhelming to those of us who are leaders.

There are ways to get those tools. Lauren’s doing a great job of providing opportunities like this for you to think about that. The other thing Lauren mentioned earlier was metrics. So again, being a big data person, I approach almost everything I do based on data. Using a growth mindset is taking what’s happened and using that to adjust to your learnings. 

So, let’s say one of the things that you should do is measure how well your onboarding program is actually working. Employees who strongly agree that their onboarding program works are rating it either a four or a five. And when the onboarding is a five, they’re twice as likely to agree that they’re fully prepared and ready to excel in the job that they’re in. 

First, measure how it is going on a scale of one to five. A Likert scale is usually the easiest scale to use and then ask for comments. What do people want to see differently? Instead of seeing that as, “Oh, my onboarding plan failed.” Think about it as, “Oh, wow, this is great data that I can use to get better!”

Use that growth mindset as you adjust. I remember one of my employees in my HR team saying, “Why do we keep fixing the onboarding program?” We had just launched it because we got some data that shows it’s not working as well as we thought it was going to. So we’re going to adjust, and yes, it takes time to do that.

But if you don’t do it, you really don’t know if it’s working the way you think it is. We just talked about how much money it costs for people to exit the organization. If you want to keep that money in your organization, onboarding is a really cool way to do that.

All right. That was a lot of information in a very short period of time, and I was talking pretty fast. Do we have questions? 

Lauren Francis: While we wait for those to come in, I would say that I think in organizations now, you can’t just create a program, whether it’s onboarding or something else, and just park it and say, “Okay, we’re done. We created it. It’s done.” It’s an ongoing, living, breathing organism. That’s how we need to look at organizations because that’s what they are. It’s like any relationship. I was listening to a leader the other day. One of his points, too, was people are looking too much for the organizations to solve everything for them. It’s all there. I need this. I want that. I want this. I want that. 

I want to know what you have to say about this because his point was that the company has its responsibilities, and the employees have their responsibilities to grow and thrive in the organization. How would you respond to that? 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, the organizations are shifting, right? So you don’t need to solve all the problems and promote everyone all the time. One of the things you talked about is I thought of moving up as a ladder. Now there’s this thought about it being a jungle gym. Maybe you’re in this one job. Let’s say, “What about thinking about going and getting this other experience over here?” If your organization is perhaps a little bit larger you have opportunities to move and flex within the organization rather than just moving up, right? So think about that if you are an HR leader.

There’s a question here, which I love. Do you have best practices specifically for organizations that are 100 percent remote? 

Okay. I love this question because remote work is here to stay. We all know that, right? There’s lots of data and studies to show that hybrid and remote work is the way of the future. One of the things that I have found is that there are some great recruiting and onboarding tools out there that are very helpful in helping you go through the mechanics and type of a webinar training session using the tools that Zoom allows you or other tools like Teams. Utilizing breakouts, having executives come in and talk about your company culture. Let’s say you have a culture where safety is very important to you. Have your executives come in at a certain point in the onboarding and talk.

Let’s say you have a day-long session or a couple of different sessions that you’re doing for onboarding. Have them pop in and share some of their own experiences. The main thing to think about when you’re doing remote work is: Don’t make it very long. If your session was a whole day in person, you need to break it up into three or four, maybe even five different sessions, because it’s just too much.

If you have to sit in there on a video all day, you’re going to lose people. So break it up, and don’t try to replicate the in-person experience. Cause you need to think about it a little bit differently. 

Leah Pons: Someone asked, “Do you have any onboarding feedback survey samples?”

Julie Kearney: I’m sure I do somewhere in my list of files.

What I would encourage you to think about is, okay, let’s think about these five things I have on the screen survey about how your experience was. I would also take Lauren’s advice about pre-boarding. Lauren made a comment about pre-boarding being like hotels for prepping for guests. I love that. Then, there is the onboarding experience. I would have a question about each one of these areas and open it for feedback from each one of these. Take this information and think about how it would fit for your own organization. 

There’s one other question: “Hi, we’ve recently begun partnering HR reps with supervisors to support the first three months of employee onboarding, mostly warehouse positions and non-exempt type roles. Do you have any suggestions on how we can HR coach but still give supervisors and managers the authority and responsibility for being the primary owners of the relationship and process?”

 Oh, I love this question. Part of what happens when you are an HR person and you’re working with the manager is it can be about unclear roles and expectations. Who really owns this? I would say HR probably owns it from pre-boarding through acceptance, perhaps. And then it’s a shared relationship, and then the manager picks it up. So, think about it almost as this curve, right? Where does the HR come in? And where do you share? And where do you then hand off to the manager?

I’m a huge fan of the RASCI model, which is basically about roles and responsibilities. If you have more than a couple of people involved in a process, it’s important to be really clear about who is responsible, who gets informed, and who supports. 

If you don’t know what the RASCI model is, it stands for R.A. S. C. I. Other models work as well, but use that as a tool to help people understand where the roles and responsibilities sit. 

Of course, don’t just hand it off; throw it over the fence and say, “Oh, here’s your job.” Make sure you’ve talked to the manager, and this is a shared experience, right? They want their people. They don’t want to go through the revolving door of recruiting either. They don’t want that. Get them into this work with you. And it makes a huge difference. 

Lauren Francis: Don’t you also think the mindset of the leader or the manager or whatever you want to call that person should be thinking about how that person Is absorbing the information or absorbing the relationship, meaning that we care about how that person’s experience is.

If you have a house guest, you want to make sure the house is ready, and you’ve done your pre-boarding and what kinds of things you want in the refrigerator and whatever, but then care about that guest having a good experience and a good time in your home and feel welcome and maybe have activities planned or dinner reservations or whatever. You’re really just a good host or hostess. The same thing goes for leaders; we have to think about it. We have to forget this is my job. It’s also more than that. 

Julie Kearney: Yeah, that’s right. And we’re all busy, and sometimes managers are overwhelmed. And so this is where HR can make a big difference when you’re partnering with that leader. HR can do a lot of the heavy lifting in the organization. The manager can do what I would say is the relationship building in the onboarding. So that’s where the shared relationship can come in. If you’ve got an HR team and you’ve got someone who is really detail-oriented and great at the process, that’s the person to put on onboarding.

Then you’re going to need somebody who can connect with those managers at the same time. So, data shows us that a great onboarding program keeps people in their seats, not just in the first few months, but over years at a time. Remember that story I told you about that woman that I hired, and she didn’t have a computer for two days? She still talks about that. It’s a big thing. People care about it because it makes them feel good when an onboarding program works. It makes them feel like, “Ah, you’re ready for me. You want me here. You’re excited to have me. And I’m excited to be here, too.” Yeah, that’s great. 

Lauren Francis: Gosh, thank you so much, Julie. This was such a lively conversation. It was so informative, and I really appreciate you being here. 

Julie Kearney: Love it. Feel free to reach out to me if you have other questions. Lauren, thank you for this opportunity. I’ve enjoyed it so much.